Emma again.

He looked at his watch. He was still more than ten minutes too early. He had made the arrangement by telephone. He had not spoken to Emma directly, but to her secretary who had said yes, Miss Sands would see Mr Peronett, and would he kindly come at five o'clock, and that he was not to knock at the door but to come straight into the drawing-room.

As Hugh raised his head to look again at the distant green door he saw to his extreme dismay that it was opening. No votary surprised by the real presence of the goddess had a more potent urge to fall senseless to the ground or preferably to sink through it. Hugh took a step back, wondering if he had time to get away round the comer of the corridor without being seen. Then a sense of the stupid undignified nature of such a flight made him reverse his movement, and he began to walk very slowly towards the door, hoping that it was not evident that he had only been set in motion by seeing it open.

Two figures issued from' the door and began to glide along the rather dark corridor towards him. As they grew larger he saw that one of them was a very handsome young woman and that the other was his son. The shock of seeing Randall in that context at that moment was considerable and Hugh's immediate feeling was one of sheer confusion, of having made some dreadful mistake. Of course he had not forgotten that Randall knew Emma. But in the picture of his own dealings with Emma, Randall had had no place, not deliberately excluded so much as automatically irrelevant and out of mind. Hugh was hurt by Randall's proximity to his own moment of truth. It was an intrusion.

Randall was now saying something to the girl, and they slightly quickened their pace as they. approached him. It was plain that there was going to be no introduction, and for a moment it looked as if the advancing pair were simply going to sweep him out of the way. How they did get past each other was not, in Hugh's memory of it afterwards, very clear. He must have stood aside. Randall and the girl, as if sucked violently through a tube, held their course. He had a rapid picture of his son's face turned towards him, perfectly bland, saying Good evening. He had an equally rapid but detailed picture of the girl's golden hair, and her also somewhat golden eyes regarding him with an expression of amused curiosity. Then they were gone and he was alone in the corridor some ten paces from Emma's door.

He stopped again and wondered if he ought now to wait till five 0 clock. But upset and even angered by the meeting with Randall, he felt that he could not put up with the triviality of hanging around for another five minutes. He drew a breath, long enough to apprehend that he was about to step from one world into another, and that he had no conception at all what the new world would contain. He passed through the green door, which had been left ajar, went straight ahead into the drawing-room and found himself in Emma's presence.

Chapter Twelve

EMMA sat in an armchair facing the door. She was hunched up and looked small and round, almost humped. She was wearing a voluminous dark green dress which seemed to reach the ground, and a long slim cane was leaning against her knees. She was watching the door intently as he entered. She was smaller than he remembered. Hugh looked down at her in silence. The sense of being at last in her presence the occurrence of something impossible, something contradictory, constituted a mystery so breath-taking that it forbade speech and almost with its intensity made him solitary again. Paralysed, he stared.

His imaginings beforehand of what this moment would be like had been hazy, yet they had seemed sufficiently lurid. He had pictured himself swept by irresistible emotion into her Anns. He had imagined loss of consciousness. He had imagined tears and nervous laughter and every form of grotesque embarrassment. But this terrible silent confrontation had a quality of the real which stripped him. It was not Emma related to him but Emma existing which was the shock which so almost threw him back into a greater solitude. It was more like the mapping of a cord than like a reunion.

After a moment or two Emma uttered a sound which might have been 'Hugh', or perhaps it was 'you' or perhaps it was just a sigh. Hugh sat down. She was very much older. He had not, in the apparitions he had had of her, seen her ageing.

Emma drew herself back as if uncurling a little. Then she said in a low voice, as if not to break a spell which kept him from being wafted back out of the door again, 'Is your curiosity fed?

'Not — curiosity — Emma, said Hugh. He now with relief felt the rush of warm emotion, the reassuring desire to kneel, the possibility of trembling.

Emma was silent, scrutinizing him. She was neither smiling nor embarrassed nor solemn. She seemed distracted and morose. Then she said something.

'You'll have to speak up, I'm afraid, said Hugh. 'I've become very deaf'

'So have I, said Emma. 'I said you looked just the same, but of course you don't. It's just that I've got used to your face already.

'I hope it doesn't upset you, my coming like this.

, I don't see why it should upset me, said Emma slowly and irritably. 'I could have said no. But I suppose I was curious too. She added, 'It was a long time ago. Too long.

'Too long for what?

She just repeated 'Too long. Too long. Then, 'Would you like some tea?

'Yes, if it's no trouble.

'It is a trouble, said Emma, 'and anyway I think I'd rather have a drink. Could you get the gin and stuff out of that cupboard?

Hugh got up. It was odd to be moving about in this room. It was like moving about in a picture or beyond a looking glass and his body felt heavy with fatality. He looked around him at Emma's things. Generations of window-curtains must have come and gone since he was last here and he was vaguely aware of some notable improvements in Emma's taste; yet he thought he recognized a few objects, and he could scarcely believe that he was not visiting the past. He set the bottles and two glasses on the little table in front of her, beside her spectacles and an immense ash-tray and a blue packet of Gauloises; and as he came near to her he had an eerie apprehension of her whole body as older. It was as if her body and his sniffed each other like two old dogs while their owners looked on. Her hand rested on the Ann of the chair like a wary lizard. The dry wrinkled skin, dark brown with nicotine, had fallen between the bones. He had the impression that she was holding her breath.

'It's odd, said Emma, when he had moved away from her. 'I always thought I should faint if I were ever face to face with you again, but I seem not to have. I feel quite ordinary. It's just that we can't talk to each other. It's a meeting in Hades.

Hugh felt a humble gratitude to her for having at least expected to be moved. He said in a gentle voice, 'We'll soon be able to talk. Just keep going.

Her face had sharpened with the years. It was more fierce and hungry then he remembered it, and the red-rimmed eyes showed luminous yet darker. Her hair seemed to have dried and stiffened into an iron-grey frizz. But already he was forgetting what she had looked like before, and the pale ghosts of familiar images fled like leaves before the wind.

'I'm not sure that I shall let you stay as long as that, said Emma.

'I'm not sure that I want to talk to you. My curiosity is almost satisfied now. I don't want to discuss the past. I wonder why you came? Hugh paused. He could not find the right Word. 'Need, he said. 'What? Do speak up.

'Need.

'Rubbish, said Emma. She sipped her drink and made a wry face. 'Why did you come to Fanny's funeral? said Hugh.

'A final act of brutality.

'Rubbish. Emma smiled briefly. She said, 'Can't you see I'm an old dry object like a stuffed alligator? A voice comes out, hut the thing is hollow really. It's no good looking for a soul inside me now.